Gene Test Reveals How Well Exercise Works For You

Two years ago, researchers in Finland discovered that different bodies respond differently to exercise. While some people can increase endurance or pump up muscles in just a few weeks, others can work out madly for years and get, well, nuthin. Now comes a British company with a simple test, requiring just a swap of your mouth, to tell you if your body is an an exercise responder, or not. Gretchen Reynolds reports in the New York Times that XRGenomics promises to get the results of a test of your DNA back to you in six weeks. The company’s methodology, Reynolds reports, is based on the work of James Timmons, a professor of systems biology at Loughborough University in England, and his colleagues at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana. Those researchers genotyped muscle tissue from people who had done 6 to 20 weeks of endurance training, and found about 30 variations in genes that influenced the degree of fitness achieved by exercise. The price? About $318 for a brief report and $478 for a more extensive explanation, along with customized exercise recommendations. Read more in the New York Times.